Edison Speaking Phonograph Company

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The Edison Speaking Phonograph Company, also Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. , was founded on January 24, 1878 as the first company after the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Alva Edison , in order to market it by means of leasing and, as a consequence, to present it to a broad, paying audience .

history

The Edison Speaking Phonograph Company was founded on January 24, 1878 by Uriah H. Painter, a Washington reporter from West Chester , Pennsylvania , Gardiner Greene Hubbard , lawyer and financier of the Bell Telephone Company , and the father-in-law of Alexander Graham Bell , George L. Bradley, Metallurgist and joint initiator and financier with Hubbard of the New England Telephone Company and the National Bell Telephone Company of New York City , Charles A. Cheever also associated with Bell's New York Telephone Company and founded Hilbourne L. Roosevelt, organ builder and cousin of Theodore Roosevelt .

The company's goal was the production and marketing of the " tin foil phonograph " originally developed by Thomas Alva Edison, who applied for the patent to the responsible authorities on December 24, 1877 and was granted it on February 18, 1878. Edison himself did not participate in the management of the company, but transferred the rights to his invention for $ 10,000 and a guaranteed profit-sharing of twenty percent to the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company.

For the first year after the company was founded, Hilbourne organized demonstrations of the phonograph in and outside of New York City to please the curious of the attending audience. James Redpath , journalist and involved in the slave liberation movement, divided the United States into different regions in which he leased the rights to display the phonograph to various companies . As the public demonstrations increased, however, in spite of the initial commercial success, in the years following the founding of the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company, it became apparent that various signs of fatigue occurred in the paying audience, which made further development of the tin foil phonograph indispensable. Should this still generate profit in the future, it had to grow into a speaking machine useful for many areas and replace the “show business novelty”.

Edison watched the tin-foil phonograph fall noticeably as the phone developed by Alexander Graham Bell went on sale. He reserved the right to advance the further development of the tin foil phonograph after completing more important projects such as the introduction of electric light. For this purpose, he bought back the entire assets of the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company from each individual partner in the company, also to protect them from financial damage. Ultimately, however, Edison did not succeed in realizing the necessary improvements in a timely manner, in contrast to Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Alexander Bell and Charles Summner Tainter , who, as the Volta Laboratory Association, further developed the tin foil phonograph into the graphophone .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Another patent relating to the phonograph, granted in the United Kingdom on the day the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company was founded, was not part of the contractual agreement between Edison and the new company and was therefore not part of their exploitation rights.
  2. ↑ The Edison Speaking Phonograph Company produced the tin foil phonograph, but did not offer it for sale, but leased it to companies that wanted to use it for their own purposes.
  3. ↑ Edison was well aware of the weaknesses of his tin foil phonograph and published a corresponding article in the North American Review in June 1878 , in which he defined ten future uses for it.

swell

literature

  • Walter L. Welch, Leah Brodbeck Stenzel Burt: From Tinfoil to Stereo - The Acoustic Years of the Recording Industry 1877-1929. University Press of Florida, Florida 1994, ISBN 0-8130-1317-8 .
  • Peter Tschmuck: Creativity and Innovation in the Music Industry. 2nd Edition. Springer, Heidelberg / New York / Dordrecht / London 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-28429-8 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of the Cylinder Phonograph. Library of Congress, accessed August 9, 2017 .
  2. ^ TA Edison: Improvement in phonograph or speaking machines. Patent number 200,521. February 19, 1878, accessed August 9, 2017 (English, Google patent search).

Web links